Halfway Hexed (16 page)

Bryn, who’d obviously showered, too, since he had wet hair and wore a bathrobe, was leaning against the bedroom doorway.

‟What’re you doing?”

“I brought you a hairbrush and Motrin.”

“Oh,” I said, pulling back the bedspread. He could’ve left them on the nightstand. “But what’re you really doing?” I got in and smoothed the covers over me.

He walked to the bed and sat on the edge, handing me a glass and a pill, then he pulled the hairbrush from the pocket of his robe and set it on the bedside table. “Avoiding the part where I leave you.”

I like it when he’s honest. And when he’s sweet. “If you stay on top of the covers, you can lie down here for a while.”

“Not the best offer I’ve had from you,” he said with a smile. He walked around the bed and lay down on his back next to me.

I reached over and tugged his arm to my side, then intertwined our fingers. The magic thrummed against our palms. “That better?”

‟Always,” he said.

“Let’s rest,” I said, turning off the lamp.

“Quite a roller coaster today.” In the darkness, his voice was a soft rasp, so intimate it made me shiver.

“Mmm hmm.”

‟After the interrogation, all I wanted to do was stay home and coat my throat with half a bottle of whiskey.” I heard that trace of an Irish lilt that I loved and was always listening for. “Then I walked into City Hall and saw you in that dress. Better than whiskey, Tamara. A lot better.”

I smiled in the darkness.

“Then the gunmen came,” he said, his voice like gravel under bike tires. “They thought they would just drag you out. You went along; I knew you would.”

“I figured maybe I’d get away, maybe not, but no point in more people getting hurt when they only wanted me.”

“And I was supposed to stand by and watch them take you?” His breath came out slowly, thoughtfully. “If we hadn’t been able to overtake them with guns, I would have lit up that place like it was Samhain all over again.”

‟Lucky you didn’t. That much magic, people would’ve noticed.”

“Yeah, it would’ve compromised my cover somewhat.”

“Somewhat,” I said, laughing softly. It was nice to hear that he cared about me. Even as confusing as things were between us, I liked it. I rolled onto my side and felt for his face with my hand. I pressed a kiss onto his cheek. “Now, go to sleep. I’m pretty sure there won’t be any kidnappings or shootings going on tomorrow, but sometimes things around here get worse before they get better.”

Chapter 17

On Sunday morning, I woke with Mercutio purring in my ear. I was curled up next to Bryn with my head on his arm, and Merc was standing behind me on the edge of the bed. When I rolled toward Merc, he hopped silently down to the carpeted floor and waited.

“I’m up.” I rubbed my eyes. ‟Why am I up?”

I climbed out of bed, tightening the sash on the bathrobe, and padded out of the room after him. We went downstairs, and I followed Merc to the kitchen windows. I peeked outside. With the outdoor floodlights, I could make out the landscape. Trees and bushes. The Amanos River snaking behind the property. I didn’t see anything unusual.

“The police took my gun, Merc. I don’t think I should go out in the dark without one. You want me to wake Bryn up and get him to give me a new one?”

Mercutio stood with his hind legs in the sink and his front paws on the windowsill. With his head next to mine, he looked back and forth.

The security phone on the wall rang, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Jiminy Crickets, I’m going to get a heart attack before I turn twenty-four.” I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Steve. What are you looking for?”

I looked around me, trying to find the hidden cameras. Reportedly, there were cameras downstairs and in the upstairs hallway, but not, Bryn promised, in any of the bathrooms or bedrooms. Also, he’d said there weren’t cameras in his study, which gave me ideas.

“I’m not sure. Mercutio, you know, my cat—?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, he got me up. You see anything suspicious on your cameras of the grounds?”

A bunch more floodlights blinked on, so I could see quite a bit better. I remembered that some of the lights were motion-activated.

“Did you turn those on?” I asked sharply.

“Yeah, so I could get a better look. Still don’t see anything.”

“Well, Merc senses something, and he’s better than all your high-tech gadgets put together.”

Merc hopped out of the sink and walked to the fridge, putting a paw on it.

‟Although, now he’s gotten interested in food, so maybe whatever it was is gone.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

I hung up the phone and opened the fridge, finding that Mr. Jenson had left a raw game hen, a whole trout with its head still intact, and a chunk of ham next to a carton of heavy cream.

“I think you’ve got your own shelf, Merc.” I set the hen on a plate on the floor. Mercutio yowled softly and went to work.

“Meet me in Bryn’s library when you’re done.”

I walked down the hall, spine straight, not shifty. Didn’t want to look guilty for the cameras. I opened the door and strolled in.

Like most things in Bryn’s house, the study’s pretty amazing. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with a ladder on wheels to get stuff off the higher-up shelves. Some of the books are locked behind custom-made stained-glass doors with images of the cosmos.

There’s a brown leather couch, matching chair, and big square ottoman across from a stone fireplace. On the opposite side of the room, there’s a heavy wood desk with carved legs. I rolled the ladder to the far left of the bookshelves and climbed up.

Just as I’d suspected, there were magical textbooks. Bryn’s superorganized, so they were just where I’d expected them to be—at the beginning. Normally they were probably glamoured, but since he was just building his power back up, he probably wasn’t wasting any magic for the smaller stuff.

I was hoping to find an “Introduction to Magic” book, but didn’t. I was ready to take down one called
Prometheus’s Domain: Foresight & Divination
, but then a black book with old-style lettering caught my eye. It had a single word etched on the spine in silver.
Death
.

I clutched it to my chest and climbed down. I sat on the Chinese rug and opened the book on the ottoman. I skimmed the introduction, which said that because of the topic’s dangerous nature, there were not going to be any example spells in the book.

I scanned the table of contents, my pulse speeding up.

Chapter 1—The Energy of the Earth
Chapter 2—The Energy of the Universe
Chapter 3—Blood & Bones Magic
Chapter 4—Premorbid Metaphysics
Chapter 5—Crossing the Threshold
Chapter 6—Journey of the Soul
Chapter 7—The Afterlife: Current Debates
Chapter 8—The Undead
Chapter 9—Death, Ethics, & Law

I flipped the page and scanned the chapter descriptions. Blood & Bones magic pertained to healing spells and hexes that caused disease. Journey of the Soul was about what happened to the spirit after the body died, which was exactly what I wanted to know. I turned to page 254. The chapter started with a lot of stuff that didn’t make sense, and I guessed I’d have needed to start at the beginning to understand all the energy talk. I flipped to the next page.

The majority of souls cross into the afterlife, which will be covered in Chapter 7. Of those souls who do not cross over, there can be two causes. In the first, it is the spirit itself that misses the opportunity to pass into the afterlife, giving rise to the term
lost soul
, and it occurs most often in cases when the body dies by violence, as is the case in murder, suicide, war, and martyrdom. The other reason a spirit is unable to pass the gate from one metaphysical plane (namely that of Earth) to the next (the afterlife) is that the soul becomes trapped by the magical nature of the death. This is seen in the case of someone dying by magical rites or when the person was the subject of a human sacrifice.

There could also be a combination of circumstances. A death by murder or suicide, for example, wherein a person has a spell acted upon them either in the moment of death or shortly thereafter. Historically, the best-known spell used for this purpose was called Purgatory, written by Morton Dunby in 1374. The spell was deemed illegal and immoral, and a coven of selected white witches studied Dunby’s spellbooks in order to write counterspells. These reverse rites were performed to free the trapped souls, which Dunby had kept inside hollowed-out animal bones that he sealed on either end with wax.

My stomach churned at the thought, and I put a hand over my mouth while I shook my head.

The coven who carried out the original counterspells favored burning Dunby’s journals and spellbooks in a cleansing fire, but the wizard magistrate for the region disagreed, citing a concern that the books might later be needed to generate other counterspells if further victims of Dunby’s hexes were found. This decision, though considered practical at the time, allowed for the theft of Dunby’s books and the widespread reproduction of his spells, which were sold on the black market. In the late 1800s a bastardized form of the spell was used to trap souls that were then used as a tithe for demons by those seeking power through black magic. This selling of souls is covered more extensively in Chapter 9, but has always carried a death sentence with or without torture tender.

‟What are you reading?”

I jumped at the sound of Bryn’s voice. I hadn’t heard him come in. He bent forward and closed the book, shaking his head when he saw the cover.

I bent my legs, feeling my wounded skin stretch against the stitches. I eased my legs a little straighter, resting my elbows on my knees. ‟What’s a ‘torture tender’?” I asked softly.

“Tender in that context means currency, as in how you pay for your crimes. It means they torture you as punishment. Usually before they kill you.”

I rested my chin in my palms, my fingers splayed over my cheeks. “It said witches and wizards used magic to kill people and to trap and sell their souls. To demons. How could anybody do that and live with themselves?”

“I don’t know, but that wouldn’t be a problem for long if they got caught.”

‟Purgatory spell, it’s called. Edie’s been trapped, and we’ve been wearing that locket for years. How could they just—”

“Tamara, your family ghost isn’t under a Purgatory spell. She’s connected to the locket, but she roams freely, doesn’t she?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, that’s different. It was probably . . .” He tipped his head back, thinking. “Maybe a Dearly Departed spell. That’s when a witch who’s close to the spirit knows the soul can’t cross over. The witch does a spell to link the spirit to some object that’s kept close to the loved one and is passed down. It protects the spirit.”

“From what?”

Bryn rubbed his jaw. “From deteriorating into a ghoul. After generations, as people who know a ghost die, their recollection of the spirit is lost, and the ghost loses its memories and changes. No one really understands the exact nature of the metaphysical disintegration or energy dispersal. There are a couple of interesting theories. There’s a witch named—” He paused and smiled, deciding I guess that I wasn’t ready for all the details. “Your aunt Edie hasn’t been cursed, at least not by the spell that connects her to the locket.”

“You said that her being connected to the locket helps preserve her memory.”

“Right.”

‟All her memories? Even ones that aren’t on the tip of her tongue or whatever?”

“You mean does she have a metaphysical subconscious where memories are stored but which she can’t access normally?”

“Exactly.”

Bryn shrugged. “It’s possible. There’s been research in that area, but I haven’t read anything about it since I was maybe seventeen or eighteen. Witches and wizards who have family ghosts are notoriously protective. They generally refuse to turn them over to be studied.”

“Of course they do,” I said.

“So then it’s hard for academics to do practical research, isn’t it? Andre may know the current theories. The more esoteric a topic, the better he likes it.”

“Can we get him in the mirror to ask him?”

Bryn chuckled. “Get him in the mirror? He’ll love that expression.” Bryn ran a hand through his shiny dark hair, which was mussed in a sexy way. “Andre’s lying low right now, remember? The less contact I have with him while I’m under Conclave investigation, the safer he’ll be. Why are you so interested in that research?”

When I didn’t immediately answer, he sighed. “Let me guess. You think Edie knows the prophecy about our two families.”

“We could prove it doesn’t have anything to do with you and me,” I said, my voice full of optimism.

“Even if it were theoretically possible to access the lost memories of lost souls, being able to draw out a specific memory? Extremely unlikely. The complexities of that kind of spell . . .”

“Right, but you’re brilliant, so you could probably write one that would work. Wouldn’t it be an interesting challenge for you?”

He laughed. “You’re about as subtle as a hurricane.”

“But what I lack in subtlety, I make up for in charm?” I asked with wide eyes.